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    Helping Illegal Home Depot Workers Get Jobs Faster

    Day Laborers at store around truck

    I don't care if they're in the United States legally or not, I respect people who make the attempt to work.

    If you wake up and stand in a hot/cold parking lot for hours for the chance to MAYBE get a $10/hour job doing boring ass grunt work....I respect that.

    This is the daily life of day laborers.

    Pretty much every single day they stand outside of stores such as Home Depot in hopes a building contractor needs some extra help.

    I wondered if a little copywriting could help these guys get work quicker.

    So I decided to try a little experiment.........

    I would like to acknowledge my good friend David Gonzales from Internet Marketing Party for his help in this experiment.  He's a real Mexico Person who speaks fluent Mexico and 100% of the communication I had with all these guys was through him.

    For this experiment he's the Mexican Neville!

    David GonzalesDavid Gonzales (This picture is completely un-altered in any way).

     

     

     

    What We Want To Accomplish:

    We'd like to see if we can help the dudes that stand on the street corner to work as day laborers get work quicker.

    Whatever method we come up with would have to be:

    • Repeatable across the country.
    • Cheap or free.
    • Simple enough to replicate by anyone.

     

     

     

    My Hypothesis: It's too complex and intimidating to hire from this market:

    Here's my original hypothesis:

    I think a HUGE problem that prevents people from utilizing these groups of able-bodied men for work is that it's super intimidating and scary to pull up to a group of them.

    They themselves don't look intimidating, but this is what happens soon as you pull up:

    Day Laborers Swarming Car

    You get freakin' SWARMED.

    This is actually a SMALL group of guys who broke away from talking to us to go see if the person in this car needed some day laborers (two guys ended up going with this car).

    Me and David both pulled up in black Lexus cars to a gas station, and before we could get out of our cars we both had 10+ dudes swarming each car.

    I ain't gonna lie, when 10 sorta-scrubby looking dudes surround you SOON as you park, your natural defense mechanisms go up.

    If a house-mom from the suburbs wants to hire some people to paint her house, she'd NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS use this method.

    It's too chaotic.

    It's too intimidating.

    It's too uncertain.

    I originally wanted to make binders showing their previous work, but this is a lot of work and money (and quite frankly, most of these guys have no specific skills to show off).

    So my hypothesis was that if each guy carries a small sign with their name and basic skills listed on it, you could easily choose who to pick.

    This way you can see which skills they have right away:

    day laborer signs

    So in the beginning, I was hoping to go talk to these guys and make them all signs.  I even brought markers and paperboard in my car.

     

     

     

    Where to Find Day Laborers:

    It was kind of hard to figure out online where these guys stand.  This isn't exactly a well-documented operation.  So we went off basic memory.  There were a few locations such as outside of Home Depot's where these guys always hang out at.

    We found an old torn-down Home Depot where across the street at a gas station these guys hang out.  So on a Wednesday morning David and I found the spot, we both pulled up into the parking lot of a gas station where these day laborers stand, and immediately were SWARMED by guys asking us (in Spanish) if we needed some help.

    "TRABAJO?  TRABAJO?  TRABAJO?" is all I heard.  (It means "Work?").

    The demographics of these guys were:

    • All men.
    • Primarily Mexican, Honduran, or Cuban.
    • Very few spoke English. At max some knew some basic English words.
    • Almost 100% are undocumented workers.
    • Age range from 22 to 65.

    We ended up speaking to a group of about 15-25 guys for an hour.

    We had to move parking lots when the owner of the gas station forced us to leave.

    There were 4 guys who were still interested in speaking with us, and talked with us for another full hour:

    Day Laborers ExperimentDavid, Neville, Laborer Dudes (for privacy reasons I chose to obscure their faces).

    We learned a lot from these guys about how this whole undocumented worker system operated. Here's what we learned about how this hiring "marketplace" works:

    How to hire day laborers (The Process):

    So here's what we learned about hiring a day laborer:

    At the specific corner we went to, they say about 40 people show up per day and wait around for work.  About 10 contractors or people will come through per day requesting workers.  This means about 15 - 20 of these guys will get picked up for work in a given day.  The others will not get work at all.

    They would call the contractors looking for help "Jefe's" which translates to "Bosses."

    They estimated about 30% of the "Jefe's" (Bosses) that pick them up are genuine and good people that pay them a fair wage.

    They estimated about 70% of the Jefe's try to weasel out of paying them, or blatantly lie about the work. For example a Jefe will imply they are going to pay someone $10/hour for work, then at the end of a 9 hour workday they'll say, "Here's your $10" and leave.  If the worker tries to protest or ask for more, the Jefe will call immigration.

    We heard story-after-story from these guys about how contractors would take them 2 hours outside the city, make them do backbreaking work, not offer any food/water/restrooms, pay them only 10% of what was agreed, and then leave them 2 hours outside the city with no way to get home.

    The workers essentially have zero recourse since they are undocumented workers.

    Another common scam is a contractor will say they are hiring them for only 2 hours to do easy air-conditioned cleaning work inside an office building.  When they get to the job site, the contractor then makes them do backbreaking work like manually pick-axe concrete for the same price and many many more hours than agreed.

    Since most of these guys sometimes have a total of $3.00 to their name, there's not much they can do besides accept the money and do nothing.

    What to Pay Day Laborers:

    The standard rate for a day laborer seemed to be between $10/hour and $12/hour.  The Jefe's they liked would pay them $10/hr for a full 8 hour workday.

    If someone were to hire a day laborer, to NOT be a completely terrible person it'd be common courtesy to:

    • Give them water.
    • Let them have access to a restroom.
    • It's not required, but lunch or some food would be nice.
    • Drive them back to the location you picked them up at.

    The other way to pay is to offer a set price for the work.  Maybe tell them you'll pay $50 for someone to paint a wall or move some lumber, and they will tell you who is willing to go for that price.

    How Can We Help:

    OK, so we know there are problems with this broken marketplace:

    • PROBLEM: The day laborers have no idea if a bad contractor will screw them over.

      SOLUTION: This problem has been solved by "ratings."  Amazon uses ratings to rate good/bad products.  Yelp uses ratings to rate good/bad restaurants.

    • PROBLEM: There's no way to get hired again by the good Jefe's except through luck.

      SOLUTION: This problem can be solved by giving the Jefe their contact information.

    • PROBLEM: There's no way for a Jefe to know what skills a worker has.

      SOLUTION: This problem can be solved by holding a sign with their skills.

    As we all were talking, I kept explaining (through the translation of David) how I think they should all keep little signs with their skills on it. This idea was rejected over-and-0ver, and quite honestly, I was a bit frustrated.

    It's like they didn't even WANT to try.

    There were two main mis-conceptions they had:

    1.) The signs I was suggesting made them look like they were begging on the side of the road, which is illegal in that area and could get them arrested.

    --and--

    2.) The signs I was suggesting would take away work from their fellow day laborers.

    THIS WAS A HUGE ISSUE FOR THEM.  They were shockingly loyal to one another, and anything that gave one guy an advantage over another they absolutely rejected.

    I kept persisting this method wasn't designed to screw over their friends, but rather make the whole marketplace more efficient.

    So then David pulled a business card out of his pocket as a demonstration of how the sign would work, and something shifted.

    When the conversation moved to them giving out business cards, they 100% agreed that would be a great idea!!

    However one guy pulled out his wallet and showed us he literally had $3 in TOTAL MONEY.  He couldn't afford business cards, or even knew how to get them made.

    Well fortunately we could maybe help them with that buy either paying for their business cards, or printing them out!

    So let's try a field-test of this business card idea.....

     

     

     

     

    Perform An In-Field Test by Printing Business Cards:

    So one thing that would help these guys tremendously is if a good Jefe needed work, he could simply text or call them for work.  100% of the guys on the corner had smartphones, so calling or texting wasn't a problem.

    It was actually a big revelation that the workers and contractors almost never traded contact info.  I explained to them how giving out business cards to the good Jefe's would dramatically increase their chances of getting a call or text from one of them asking for more help.  Perhaps even higher-paid specialized work.

    Four guys were down to try this out.  So we made some business cards for each of them.  I just bought a pack of Avery Business Card paper and printed them out manually on my inkjet printed (I purposely did not buy them online because it was 1.) too expensive for most of these guys and 2.) a lot of them don't have credit cards to buy stuff online.

    So we manually started making 4 different business cards for 4 different guys:

    It was pretty simple to make each business card using Avery Templates:

    Day Laborer Business Cards

    It took about 5 minutes to write out and print out each set of business cards (30 business cards each):

    Day Laborer Business Cards

    In a few minutes we got all the business cards printed:

    Day Laborer Business Cards

    I texted the day laborer dudes asking if I could come by the gas station and deliver their business cards, and surprisingly two of them were at David's house painting!  He was undergoing a big remodeling of his house and needed help, so he hired a couple of the guys:

    Giving business cards to day laborers

    So now armed with business cards these guys can "sell" their laborer more effectively without having to be at that street corner:

    Day laborer business cards jefe

     

     

    We then asked about skill level.  One guy was skilled at leveling entire foundations of houses. One guy was great at woodworking and cabinet building.

    I was curious if he had photos of his work, and he was proud to show it! Here's some pics he texted me:

    Cabinet and wood work

    Not bad huh?

    What's interesting about this is a lot of these guys have specialized skills which go completely under utilized.  This guy can do great woodworking and cabinetry, but since his sole way of getting business is standing at a gas station corner hoping for someone who needs day laborers, he's relegated to digging holes for fence posts and busting up chunks of concrete with a pick axe.

     

     

    Sincerely,

    Neville Medhora

     

    P.S. What else do you think these guys could do to get more work?  Let me know in the comments!


    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments



    Guest Terence

    Posted

    Don't have any brilliant or even unbrilliant ideas but wanted to commend you and David. I used to live down off William Cannon and would use laborers outside HD — honest, hard workers, not afraid to get stuck into it.

    Any naysayers here, please rent the movie A Day without Mexicans. Might change your minds a bit. These dudes are only wanting to feed themselves, their family, and probably loved ones back in their home country.

    Have a heart. There but for the grace of the gods go you.

    Link to comment
    Guest David D

    Posted

    Neville, you amaze me! You tried to address an issue that I think most people would shy away from. For you to reach out to these gentlemen who are at the bottom rungs of society is pretty awesome, showing what a good person you are. The world needs more people like you. I hope there is a follow up to this post letting us know the short and longer term results of your efforts.
    Link to comment
    Guest Sergio

    Posted

    False Judy! you would not be put in jail, you would be received with so much respect for being a guest in our country.

    Btw, Automation is stealing your jobs, not this people

    Link to comment
    Guest douglas churchill

    Posted

    Correction. App probably won't work. Would identify them and phone location .... Problem when undocumented.
    Link to comment
    Guest Priscilla Wood

    Posted

    What's the relationship between these workers and "Americans that are depressed" or "the costing of living that is inflated"?
    Link to comment
    Guest henry bowman

    Posted

    Really? did the "Native Americans" just spring out of the ground? NOPE! They immigrated for somewhere else, but its clear mental midgets like you have no real original thinking, just cliches.
    Link to comment
    Guest Priscilla Wood

    Posted

    "mental midgets like you" ... lol love it when people get worked up while trying to make an argument.
    Link to comment
    Guest Priscilla Wood

    Posted

    THIS! Finally, yes, automation is the current issue, not these workers.
    Link to comment
    Guest Cindy

    Posted

    Good, simple experiment on business cards. The current culture is that they are getting underpaid overall for their services and paid in cash, so no paper trail. If business cards are generated simply and easily, then there is a likely chance someone will hire from their skills sets;however, granted they are undocumented this call also pose issues if the person hiring wants to insure liability and wants a licensed and bonded service. On one side, it can possibly help the day laborers get more volume of work but can be limited by their own limitations too, i.e. language barrier, liability if worst case scenario a roof becomes defective from all the hard work and mad skills they may have. All in all, the businesses that are already established here and the skills they may already have and want to market pose the imbalance of working for the common denominator - our US dollar.
    Link to comment
    Guest Linda

    Posted

    Sergio, you are exactly correct! As an American who travels the back roads of Mexico this is the way we have been treated almost everywhere we have been, including Cuba. I am saying that the majority of people in 3rd worlds have more manners and empathy for fellow humans then anyone in America.
    Link to comment
    Guest Jim Jones

    Posted

    I agree. Illegal workers create a race to the bottom scenario where other firms also have to hire illegal workers to keep labor costs low enough to compete. What if someone was helping these men all become $8/hour copy-writers or the cheapest website entrepreneurs around? Of course we know that they can't so we allow this kind of stuff because we're "skilled" and so relatively immune to the effects of illegal immigrant labor and totally write off those in our economy who are "unskilled." If the people commenting here actually had to compete against people willing to do their jobs for half the pay and no labor protections I don't think they'd see this effort in the same sort of light.
    Link to comment
    Interesting experiment! Too bad (if not completely surprising) that the comments ended up getting racist/political in some cases. The unique limitations of the market you approached make me wonder what the longer-term impacts will be on the workers you focused on. Any chance on a follow-up somewhere down the line?
    Link to comment
    Guest Lara

    Posted

    I don't have any additional suggestions - there are some good ones in the comments already!

    I simply wanted to thank you and David for helping these men. You both are compassionate, intelligent and kind! Thank you for sharing a lesson with us, and for working with these guys to make their lives better.

    Link to comment
    Guest Skippy

    Posted

    As a specialty contractor who sometimes works in homes after a homeowners experience, I can tell you a major drawback not addresses here.

    Crime.

    Obviously not all, but what has happened to many of my clients, they hire the hard working day laborers, and most are, and then a few days later, break ins occur.

    The day laborers are probably not doing it, but a not so pleasant associate is probably paying them for intel.

    However it happens, it happens to often.

    If you hire this way, watch for wandering and extra attention being paid to your house.

    Link to comment
    Guest Kendra Wright

    Posted

    I also loved this post and thought it was a really creative way to apply copywriting skills. I also really loved how much I learned about this process. The photos of the laborers work at the end were amazing! Thanks for tackling a subject that can clearly be touchy. Really loved this.
    Link to comment
    Guest Jennifer Hansen

    Posted

    Love that you did this. I volunteer at a community center set up expressly for the reason of helping day workers. As you found in your experiment, it is a complex problem and you really summarized many of the issues well. How do you make it easy and non-threatening for folks to hire these guys? How do you make sure they are safe and paid what they are promised? How do you provide these folks a path to integrate and become successful in our society?

    El Sol in Jupiter, Florida is a community center that was established by various religious, governmental, community groups to not only help these day workers, but to get them off the streets. They wait inside to be hired (not on the streets) where they can benefit from services like free English lessons, free breakfast, etc. There is a process they follow to register with the center, just as there is a process for those that hire them. When you want to hire a day laborer, you show up, name your price, and since the process is mediated by a 3rd party (the community center) everyone is a known quantity. It ensures a level of accountability. You are expected to provide lunch and to drive these guys back to where you picked them up. We have a huge Guatemalan population, but I've gone in the summer and picked up local high school kids too. The center mostly serves the needs of the undocumented worker population, but is open to everybody who needs to make money.

    The center enjoys huge community support since it solved the problem of day workers hanging out on certain streets for jobs. There is an element of crime/insecurity and just "broken windows" unsightliness that goes along with groups of day laborers on the streets. The center is right next to the police station in my town. The soccer team of the center plays soccer with the police. There's a community garden there, a weekly farmer's market, classes (cleaning, sewing, English, US civics: how to actually navigate our beaurocracy). The center provides a pathway for both documented and undocumented workers to integrate into our society. A win for undocumented workers and a win for someone who needs some weekend help around their house.

    Here's the link: http://friendsofelsol.org/

    Link to comment
    Guest Jennifer Hansen

    Posted

    As an aside: many of these people do not know how to read and write in their native language (Spanish) and in some cases, Spanish isn't even their strongest language! (Many Guatemalans speak Mayan dialects.)

    I have found that for many, comfort with reading and writing is in itself a challenge which would make any smartphone based system for employing them challenging.

    I do speak Spanish, so I have not experienced a language barrier. The barrier I come up against the most with those who I want to work with again is that they don't have the same relationship with technology and their smartphone as I do. They either don't message back or message back in a way that is not understandable because they are not literate in their own language. I have experienced much frustration with some very good workers over this. An app alone will not solve this issue.

    Link to comment
    Guest James Jefferson

    Posted

    I applaud the effort... but, go to the inner city or blighted areas and lend your expertise. The people you are helping need to get in line. Many of my brothers and sisters need help to get off of welfare here at home. I won't be a dick and advocate mass exodus from your emails until I see your next project working to help American citizens. So far not impressed.
    Link to comment
    Guest Dave Mann

    Posted

    Your doing a great job of destroying the USA's economy. Yes, we need more of these illegals to come to the white countries so we can have cheap labor and fill our streets with criminals. We need to work together to find better ways to destroy the US economy faster. You see the super rich Jew's have an agenda to genocide the white race, all the white countries around the world are being completely flooded by none white immigrants and they say this makes us stronger. No it is to help the evil super rich Jews destroy the white race. Africa is for the Africans, China is for the Chinese but white countries are for everyone. You see in order for the jews to completely take over the world and install the jew (New) World Order they must first destroy the white race because white people create, discover, invent 97% of the technology we use today. With out white people the world will slowly disintegrate. So lets all give a helping hand in helping the jews install the communist new world order where everyone is a complete slave well that is if they don't kill you first. They want to get rid of 85% of the worlds population. Please help these poor Mexicans that can't make a country of their own come to the USA and make USA a larger Mexico. Let's weaken USA so the Jews can complete the take it over.
    Link to comment
    Guest Pauly

    Posted

    Nev...I'm not going to lie, I want a t-shirt! :)

    This is amazing experiment! The fact you're sparking some strong emotional comments mean you're doing something that's working. Up here in Canada, in a tiny city predominately white I see what are likely very low income people and/or homeless going through recycle bins looking for empties they can return for a deposit. It occurred to me that some of them are riding their bikes around, in deep snow, often at night with headlights, carrying multiple bags. I'm stunned with amazement how they'reworking their ASSES off just to earn a few dollars. Unfortunately their routes seem to be hit and miss. It's a shame nobody has a made an app for them and call it something like "Empty Elves", and let neighbors that want to leave their empties on the curb mark it on a map or drop off... hmmm...

    Overall the one thing I was hoping you'd touch on is the rating part. How can they earn ratings like amazon or an uber driver? I suspect everyone would be nervous to post online ratings due to immigration and other reaons... if there away around that using word of mouth or something like an anonymous profile site redirected by a QR code?

    Again...great post man!

    Link to comment
    Guest Kristian

    Posted

    Great article and experiment Neville, looking forward to hearing the results, can you get David to call the guys for a follow up email?

    It seems strange that they dont want to advertise their skills so they dont take work off each other, perhaps that can be used to their advantage though? The workers need to organise themselves through a group leader. Like a Taxi Rank at the airport, the Leader organises a rota system every day by drawing numbers out of a hat for the workers that turn up that day. Then he then assigns work to the workers from 1-20+ every day, they can even organise it by skill set EG Painter 1-5, Carpenter 1.7. All the guys can then wait patiently for their number to come up. When a car pulls up, the leader points to a piece of paper with the skills on and the contractor nods his head etc for each worker needed. No intimidating mob just a well organised crew of people.

    Also the workers might be reluctant to carry biz cards or flyers as it identifies them looking for work if searched by the Police or immigration officials.

    To try to prevent working for rip off contractors

    Why don't the workers all sit down and agree a code. For example any kind of animal with more than 4 legs equals good boss and any kind of animal with 4 legs or less equals bad boss. They then get flyers printed between them that say, "Thank you for helping me help you today! Please say [insert animal] when you need help again to get the best workers. The workers carry two flyers one with good animal and one with bad and gives them to the boss at the end of his shift. If a rip off boss pulls up and quotes the bad animal then the group leader notes the reg and type of car then rings the other group leaders to blacklist the contractor.

    Every week the passcode for good and bad boss changes. Word will soon spread who the people are ripping them off.

    Link to comment
    Guest Chris

    Posted

    I love these projects you undertake to help people improve their business/way of life.
    Link to comment
    Guest Sean

    Posted

    I'm not so worried about the workers, it's the person that tries to hire them that would get the felony charges and massive fine. It's against federal law to hire anyone that is in the United States illegally. So after they release the workers they will arrest YOU and they will charge YOU and YOU will go to federal prison. Not so sure if making that business card is such a good idea, it could be used as evidence against YOU at your trial. Good luck & adios.
    Link to comment



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